An Old Town in a Modern World

Dad phoned me the other day when he got back from the Cayman Islands (a beautiful place, to be sure). He said it was around 90 degrees every day. Convert that to Celsius and you're at about 30 degrees. Right now it's -26 here in Banff with windchills forecasted for tomorrow as low as -55. That's an 85-degree difference - you could almost boil water in the temperature difference alone!! Whew!

Just how cold is -26, anyway?

Well for starters, windchill starts to mean both more and less at the same time. You get a light breeze by a passing car in -26 degree weather and your windchill plummets you 10 degrees or so. So having a windchill of -55 doesn't really mean that there's a strong wind - just that it's FREAKING COLD.

Walk outside and the fluids in your nose freeze your nose shut (seriously!)

Walk outside, take a deep breath, and be welcomed by a coughing fit as the fluids in your lungs temporarily flash-freeze.

They shut down the ski hills. Yea! They did! 2 reasons here. First is, naturally, safety. THe hills are well into the -30s because of their altitude, and remember what I said about windchill at cold temps? Now do the same thing at high skiing speeds and I'm sure you're looking at absolute zero all over your face. Secondly, the runs you go on in between the mandatory hot-chocolate break after every run aren't even very good.

You see, skiing and boarding rely on a small film of water building up between your skiis and the snow - it negates a good deal of the friction. At these temperatures, it's too cold for that to form. Secondly, the shape of snowflakes change into little barbed things that grip your skiis when you ski. The final result is that you simply don't move out there. (Ever wondered why snow squeaks when you step on it once it gets cold enough? Same things)


So long story short - it's really cold. Tomorrow is set to be even colder with windchills of nearly -60. It happened very quickly. Bonnie and I went skiing yesterday. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera (again), but it was a great day. Lots of fresh powder (a foot over the last 2 days) and pretty good visibility. When we arrived at the hill at about 10:00, it was -6. When we left at about 2, it was -17. By dark that night it was beneath -20 and by bedtime we were down to -26. Woke up this morning and it was -36 BEFORE windchill. I'll tell you what, my car did NOT want to start. I think it had given itself up for dead.


With the cold, you get some pretty neat things though. The sky all day today was an odd light blue color, that almost looked like it was frozen. All the trees are iced over, of course, and the sky, though cloudless, looked somewhat cloudy from the ice crystals in the air (yea that water vapor in the air freezes too). And then there's just that there is very little movement outside. People don't like to go out there because, well, it's freaking cold, and the animals just seem to stay put as best they can. Awesomely quiet all day, though.

I stepped in to the little coffee shop next door to the internet cafe to pick up some pastries to munch on through my ship. It's a quaint, old-style place with a little bar by a large front window like that kind you would expect to see in old Christmas movies. The name is printed in arched, gold type right on the window and is completely wood-framed. The door is right next to it, an old wooden door with those little wooden crosses in it. The constant opening and closing of the door caused the shop to be fairly chilly, so everybody was sitting in there with hats and jackets on, and clouds of steam coming from every drink in the place. It was 5:00 in the afternoon and nothign was moving outside the window, and, despite the noise of the conversations, the place was entirely peaceful - like an old-tyme family coming home from work and school, taking off their boots, and sitting down for coffee in front of the fire. When you least expect it, this town conjures up these special little moments that just keep you saying "what a place to be"

3 non-mountain pictures? Wha?!

It hasn't snowed at all lately. An inch here or there on the hill, but nothing to speak of down here in town. It's also been unsually mild, which is an odd occurence after near-record lows through November and December. Forecast has some double-digit minuses towards the end of the week though, so maybe things will get back to normal around here. Need a good dump of snow big time!

Sorry to the non-music folks that read this, but I had to post it for those who are musically inclined. AS you know, I teach music history on Friday evenings - RCM Grade 3. We had our post-christmas review class this past week and one of the things i did was put on the 1st movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and told them to, as a group, put sonata form on paper. They could diagram, draw, write, or anything they wanted. Here's what they came up with:



Sorry for the quality there.

As for the other 2 promised pictures, they unfortunately have to do with last week's post. I was browsing news sites, as I often do at work, and found the same information on both sites. The bias is unmistakable

Site 1:



Site 2:



The first shot is from the CBC webpage. It's got a huge focus on data and I can't even begin to speculate about how they ordered the candidates at the bottom. It seems entirely random to me. Here's a question though: by this photo, who is winning? Who is most important? Heck I don't know.


The second shot is from the CNN webpage (yea, CNN). First of all, where are all the candidates? Guess about 1/2 of them didn't even make the cut. Secondly, did you notice that Mike Huckabee looks confused, John McCain looks old, and Mitt Romney looks like a paragon of human virtue?


I promise this is my last politically involved post, at least for a long while. I just had to show this as it relates to something I spent a good while posting about last week. Next time we'll be back to your regularly scheduled mountain and snow pictures and news about life in good ol' Banff

Consider this title a pre-emptive apology

Well, back from vacation. There was a certain degree of...excitement upon landing here in Calgary but you will all be happy to know that 12 hours later, everything is worked out except our 3 missing bags.

Yea that's right - 3 bags didn't make it.

Looks like it's back to the grind for now. Thing haven't changed much, and they don't appear to have gotten any significant snow over the break, which is too bad. Still waiting on the best runs to be decent.

I'm going to take this no-real-news opportunity to do something I usually try not to do. I spend a lot of time at work reading up on world news, but lately I've been following American politics very closely. Frankly, it's disturbing. Canadian readers: it's probably best if you just stop reading now and wait for the next post.

To my family and friends in the states,

It's an election year and far be it for me to suggest who you should or should not vote for, or even which party to vote for. (Heck, they're both pretty much the same party anyway.) However, do me the favor of giving me your ear for a moment.

Winston Churchill is credited with quite the quote. He said, "The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter." When I watch newscasts and debates, I can't help but agree with the man. How many questions about gay rights, abortions, gun control, and religion in government do we really need, and how many times must we ask them before we realize that the answers to these questions never change. If insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, how many times must we ask a presidential candidate his or her views on abortion before we declare ourselves insane?

It's not that the topics are unimportant, it's that their nature does not provide a grounds in which opinions can be changed, or an argument can be won. Somebody who believes in right to life based on religious dogma can find no common ground with a somebody who believes in a woman's right to choose. Remove the conversation from a conversation with friends over a drink to a political stage and you have even less chance for enlightening conversation or debate.

Yet so much of every debate is tied up in these issues that have no resolution in a presidential political forum. They are certainly valid and important issues, but given that the answers today are the same as they were yesterday and will be the same tomorrow, it seems like time would be better spent by simply asking for "yes or no" answers from each candidate and moving on. Late-tuning voters can look up the answer for their favorite hot-button issue later. There are so many huge, multi-faceted and urgent issues in the world now that spending so much time discussing these dead-end arguments is almost as much of a crime as the amount of time the major news networks spend telling us about celebrity birthdays, babies, and eating habits.

Of course, the major news networks don't help. They decide what to air and how to spin it. Yes, spin it. Find me a major, American news network that doesn't spin a news story and I'll simply point at you to show you somebody who agrees with the news network. A right-leaning person finds no bias in Fox News, because you agree with them. A left-leaning person finds no bias in NBC, again, because you agree with them. If you don't believe me, spend a few weeks watching and reading news from several news networks, and include BBC in your list (the British-based news network specializing in world news). You'll never look at Fox, NBC, CNN, or any other American news network the same again.

And how many of you are comfortable with the news networks deciding which candidates have a chance before you do? It's an amazing world when simply reporting polls on a daily basis has an impact on those poll numbers the next day. It would seem that bandwagon fans aren't relegated to solely sports teams; everybody likes to vote for a winner. How comfortable are you that your neighbor may vote for Obama simply because he won in Iowa? Or, alternately, that he may vote for Hillary simply because Obama won in Iowa?

As an onlooker in Canadian elections, I have noticed that most candidates in this country live by the maxim "he who puts up the most campaign signs wins". While Canada is strangely fixated on campaign signs, it is true that a large part of campaigning is simply name-recognition. If you can stand up and talk and wave your arms more than your opponents, you stand a better chance of winning or, at least, being taken seriously. With this in mind, re-watch some of the debates and think about how much chance candidates like Biden, Dodd, Paul, Tancredo, and the like were given by the news networks.

If Joe Biden is allowed, by the moderator (always an employee of the news network), to speak 10% as much as Obama, is it really that much of a surprise that Obama is ahead in the polls? Now before you get all in a huff, consider further that Fred Thompson got more airtime on major news networks for contemplating announcing himself for the presidency than existing candidate Ron Paul. Again, are you comfortable with the news networks narrowing down the candidates for you?

This is getting much more long-winded than I intended, but I have one more thing to say. A plea, if you will. The US government is designed to be slow and inefficient; it is designed so that no one man can wield a disproportionate amount of power. That said, I challenge you to name three significant actions the government has done over the past year. Slow and inefficient doesn't even begin to describe it when the most newsworthy bill the government passed was one condemning that paragon of 3rd Grade Wit "General Betray-us" advertisement. Is this a government you can really be proud of? One where a day doesn't go by where our president doesn't threaten to veto a bill and our Congress doesn't respond with "we will not cooperate with you"?

While one man can't bring about well, anything, on his own, the President is still the single most important political figure in the government. When you vote, vote smart, with real issues in mind. I hear so often that people like certain candidates because they are good looking! We have contests where looks are the deciding factor - they are called beauty pageants. Is the US presidential election a beauty pageant? Would you debase this action of voting, that has taken on near-ritual status in the United States, by voting for somebody because he is more handsome than the other candidates? My response to these people is usually, "do me a favor. please don't vote"

Do the research, find a candidate that epitomizes your beliefs. Don't be a sheep, recognize platitudes when you hear them, and force candidates to be accountable to the questions asked them and the answers they state.

That is all